Weekend

Dr. Ewa studying
some ancient
Geez manuscripts

For the past month we have been hosting a team of polish art restorers at our library. They are part of a project sponsored by Arcadia and the British Library to safe endangered manuscripts by digitalizing them and putting them online. Given our precarious situation here in the Middle-East and how the national treasures of nearby countries have been destroyed by islamists, it was a good move to undertake this project now.

Though not really ancient, our manuscripts are nevertheless interesting in terms of curious forms of book-binding, covers and sometimes content. The team did a great work by restoring a couple of really damaged books and taught us how to conserve these manuscripts in a proper way to prevent or delay further corrosion.

Rain on Monday

Anyway Phase 1 of this project is over and I'm back to doing other daily works that have been backlogged. I'm really longing for a summer break ... the sun is back up but it's not as hot as the previous days. Nights get chilly though. The unusual rains last Monday and Tuesday are over but it drizzled this morning. Weird.

I still haven't had time to visit the Festival of Lights. When I reach home in the evenings, I go straight to sleep ... without dinner.

The political turmoil in the country continues to unravel as one minister resigned in protest over the PM's choice of the extremist right-winger to be Defense Minister. Everyone else is nervous ... we're expecting wars now that this guy is in charge. He's too belligerent. Next week will be the test - when Jerusalem Day falls on the same day as the start of Ramadan.